Donor support inspires nursing student Ali Ghafoor to new heights of success

This post was originally published here.

As Ali Ghafoor approaches the finish line of his Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at the University of the Fraser Valley, he looks back in gratitude at those who have helped him along the way.

His professors, of course, and his supervisors on his clinical placements. The friends he made in the program. The patients who showed patience while he learned about the hands-on aspects of nursing.

But there’s another, less visible group he’s grateful for: the individual donors and organizations who funded the 16 financial awards he received to support him during his nursing studies. These awards include the UFV Alumni Association Endowment Leadership award, UFV academic scholarships from the Faculty of Health Sciences, the Royal Columbian Hospital Annual Scholarship, the Dhami Family Endowment Leadership Award (Nursing) and the Ecotex Endowment Leadership Award in Nursing.

Not only is Ali a full-time nursing student, he also researches sleep apnea at a UBC lab. Outside of the hospital and the lab, he runs a free tutoring program for under-served youth and mentors rural high school students who are figuring out what comes after graduation.

“The financial support I received during my nursing program gave me the freedom to commit fully to my studies, my research, and the mentoring work I do outside the classroom. Together, those three things made me a more complete nurse than any one of them could have done,” Ali says.

Those experiences have also pointed him toward a particular kind of nursing career: one based in a rural setting.

“We call it universal healthcare, but where you live still determines what that looks like. In communities with fewer specialists and services, the scope of what you’re responsible for expands as the infrastructure around you shrinks. The nurse has to think across disciplines and respond to whatever walks through the door with a degree of independence that most urban settings do not require, because the nurse in those settings is often the reason a patient actually receives the standard of care the system promises.”

Ali had already completed a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and was conducting research in the field of sleep apnea when he decided that he wanted a career that offered more direct and applied interaction with patients. His decision to pursue nursing meant signing on for another four years of study.

At UFV, he found a program that places students in clinical settings with patients from early on.

“What I value most about the program here is that clinical experience and classroom learning run alongside one another. Clinical placement starts in the second semester, which means you spend most of your degree program learning theory with patient experience informing how you process it from the beginning. The faculty members reflect that same intentionality, because nursing teaches you to advocate for your patients and the faculty here model that by how they treat their students, creating the kind of environment where growth into the profession is always the expectation.”

Many of the high school students Ali mentors are the first ones in their family to consider post-secondary education, and he sees a bit of himself in them.

“I know what it is like to grow up in a household where no one before you had done this and to wonder whether higher education was ever meant to include someone like you, and I see that same uncertainty in the young people I tutor and the rural students I work with. My answer to them is the example of my life.”

He recognizes that his parents made sacrifices for him, and that makes him even more determined to succeed.

“My parents left Afghanistan so their children could build lives they could not have built there, and my degree studies are part of what their sacrifice made possible. On the days I want to stop, I remember that stopping was something they could not afford. Student life asks for your time and energy, and I have had stretches where I was running on almost no sleep and questioning whether I could sustain the pace.”

While Ali is grateful for the scholarships and awards he has received and the financial benefits they bring, he is also thankful for the show of faith in his potential that they symbolize.

His advice for other students? Don’t be afraid to apply for awards.

“Many students talk themselves out of applying before they even start because they read the criteria and assume they are not competitive enough. I have applied for awards I was almost certain I would not receive, and some of those turned out to be the ones I won because you cannot completely predict what a committee is looking for.”

Ali leaves UFV this spring knowing where he wants to practise and who he wants to be when he gets there.

“I want whoever made it possible to know that their generosity found someone who will spend their career extending it into lives the donor will not see, through work they made possible long before it began. The truest form of stewardship is a life that justifies that trust.”

This month UFV is sending thanks to donors and supporters through the With U campaign, acknowledging that the generosity of donors helps remove barriers so students can focus on what matters most: learning. Thanks to all of our donors and supporters.